illustrator

Guildford Games Festival Illustration

This year the Guildford Games Festival and Awards hired me to create a custom illustration featuring many obvious as well as hidden references to the Guildford and worldwide gaming industry. Guildford is home to many large and indie game studios alike and has been called the ‘Hollywood of games’. Being a Guildford born-and-bred gamer myself with experience in creating game art, it was an enormous pleasure to be part of this project. Due to obvious reasons the festival went live on twitch this year instead of at the usual G-live venue. The much smaller Guildford Games Awards ceremony was held at the Boileroom in at extremely limited attendee numbers, where the design was displayed on large banners and later printed on merchandise.

The official Guildford town coat of arms consists of a shield with the town’s castle in it, topped by a knight’s helmet wearing a crown, in which there is a roaring lion. I began the design with this basic set of elements but swapped the knight out for a dead astronaut to represent the multitude of space related themes in games by local studios. This unfortunate pilot has the Guildford town centre area post code (GU1) on their helmet screen plus both X-Box & Playstation buttons on the crown and helmet. The central jewel in the crown is a reference to No Man’s Sky, the expansive space exploration title created by local studio Hello Games. The lion inside the crown is a more elaborate version of the logo from the legendary Lionhead studios. This is an example of the level of detail and referencing throughout the rest of the design, which has over 30 references in total, some only recognised by local game creators who have been around since the early 90’s.

Clothing, posters and more on the Guildford Games Festival website.

Guildford Games Festival Awards Banner 2
guildford games festival awards models

November was a wild one...

The proverbial boat was pushed out this month. After weeks of living like some crazed techno orc huddled over my graphics tablet in the Adobe glow late into the evening, it looks as though more sleep is a real option for me once again! I can rest assured that it was all worth it for the amazing projects I have had the pleasure of working on for the last month. ‘What projects?!’ I hear you softly mumble… Well…



1: The mysterious, highly detailed game-inspired illustration….

A project to create a highly complex/detailed illustration for an upcoming games festival really pushed my skills and imagination to the limits and I very much look forward to sharing that with you when the time comes. There are over 30 visual references and in-jokes representing games, games companies and other computer/console related themes within one image. Hopefully it will be a fun game in itself for you to discover them all. The design will be available to purchase on clothing, posters, postcards and more alongside the festival - More information to come!


2: Merch design for streamer & content creator TagbackTV

US based online creator TagBackTV has a youtube following of over 1 million subscribers. It was therefore a huge pleasure to work with him on creating two separate merch designs incorporating characters from his original tongue-in-cheek storyline ‘La Hamilia’, a Godfather style mafia saga played out by hamsters and other characters on his Animal Crossing New Horizons & Happy Home Paradise islands. Will Flurry take over the family business once Don Marlo retires, or will Detective Beardo and rookie Filbert be able to stop the dastardly family? Tune in to find out!

The designs are created as parodies of vintage movie posters and are available on a number of different products including hoodies , t-shirts, mugs and more.

Tagback TV La Hamilia
Tagback TV La Hamilia poster Video Thumbnails

3: Album artwork for multi-award winning blues artist Dom Martin

Dom Martin is a truly hard working and authentic blues artist from Belfast, recognised by both the UK and European Blues Awards for his raw, silky talents. Last year Dom and his team asked me to bring a concept to life for the vinyl edition of his first album ‘Spain to Italy’. This month they reached out once more for matching artwork for a second run of physical CD’s due to an unsurprising rise in demand. I very much look forward to adding this to my current Dom Martin collection! Buy merch here and help to support live music.

Dom Martin Spain to Italy CD